Information for 17448IIED

Indigenous peoples’ land rights in Cameroon: progress to date and possible futures

In Cameroon, commercial and infrastructural developments are exerting increasing pressure on land and natural resources, which is in turn exacerbating the risks to the rights of indigenous peoples. Against this backdrop, the ongoing process of revising Cameroon’s land legislation provides an opportunity to secure aspects of indigenous peoples’ rights, as part of a wider effort to secure the land rights of local communities. To harness this, ten years after the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, indigenous representatives and key stakeholders came together in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to assess the advances made in securing indigenous land and resource rights to date and to discuss ways to safeguard them further. The meeting outcomes point both to past achievements in policy and practice and to concrete options for the land law reform process.